plot twist

Emma Watson Gave Beauty and the Beast a Fresh Feminist Twist

Emma Watson, a famous actress who uses her downtime to perform acts of vigilante feminism, has put a new spin on a vintage fairy tale. She plays Belle in Disney's upcoming live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, but has now revealed to fans that the book-loving princess has a new backstory.

In the original, Belle is a bookworm, the daughter of Maurice (played by Kevin Kline), a local bookseller and quirky inventor. She feels distant from the people in her village, but Watson wasn’t satisfied with the character’s somewhat lacking backstory.

“In the animated movie, it’s her father who is the inventor, and we actually co-opted that for Belle,” Watson tells Entertainment Weekly. “I was like, ‘Well, there was never very much information or detail at the beginning of the story as to why Belle didn’t fit in, other than she liked books. Also what is she doing with her time?’ So, we created a backstory for her, which was that she had invented a kind of washing machine, so that, instead of doing laundry, she could sit and use that time to read instead. So, yeah, we made Belle an inventor.”

Belle’s an inventor! How very exciting. It does actually seem rather fitting for the character, who doesn’t have much to do before the castle beyond reading books and ignoring the advances of Gaston (played by Luke Evans in the adaptation).

Offscreen, Watson has been building a reputation as a mainstream feminist for years now, creating organization HeForShe with the U.N. and starting a feminist book club, currently reading Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou. She's a natural Hermione, that one.